‘A people united’: British prime minister Neville Chamberlain announces the start of war on 3 September 1939.
Photograph: Fox Photos/Getty Images

The European War has begun. The catastrophe that for three years has hung over the world has been brought down on us. The existence of our common civilisation, the lives of countless thousands of men, women and children, are thrown into jeopardy

The British people enters this war with sad hearts at the inexpressible and wanton folly of it. But we enter it with a determination and a grimness that we have never felt before in any war of our history, since those terrible years a hundred and thirty years ago when we stood alone against the master of Europe.

This is a war we have striven desperately to avoid; we have made sacrifices of principle and prestige in order to conciliate the aggressor; we have come to the end. No efforts of our diplomacy or that of France or Italy, no appeal to the highest principles of human morality, whether from the Pope or from the heads of States, great and small, have prevailed to turn Herr Hitler aside.

The British people enters this war with sad hearts at the inexpressible and wanton folly of it

He has rejected all and, brushing aside any pretence at negotiation, has invaded a neighbour State without declaration of war. Even in his own shameless record of insincerity and mendacity, there has been nothing to compare with the process by which, within the space of a few short months, Poland was transformed from being a friend to be courted and flattered into an enemy to be reviled and bullied, and eaten up as were Austria and Czecho-Slovakia before her.

Britain and France have their guarantees to Poland, but even if they had not we could not stand aside. The fate of Poland to-day would be that of Holland, of Switzerland, of Belgium to-morrow, and of ourselves and France the day after. It cannot go on. At all costs we must make our stand and, though we perish, try to save what remains of liberty and freedom in Europe.

The one consolation we have in this dark hour is that we act as a united people. In 1914, though we went forward with the same brave words on our lips, many of us felt reservations about the sincerity of some of our Allies. This time there are none. The Nazi system, its brutal prosecuting spirit, its colossal immorality in international relations, are something which even the most cynical feel that in sheer self-preservation we must resist.

In 1914 men argued long over the diplomatic documents which the belligerent Powers published in their own justification. They will not – outside Germany – argue long over the White Paper of last night. The German documents reveal every characteristic that has made Hitler the enemy of goodwill between peoples. His amorality stands out nakedly.

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It is for the overthrow of this dictator and his system of government that we enter the war. We have no enmity with his people, but we can have no truce with a system that renders a beneficent peaceful civilisation insupportable.

In these aims we have, as the Prime Minister said, the support of the whole British Commonwealth and of the great neutral world. Nowhere can the events of the last few days have made a greater impression than on the United States.

But we must reckon with a harder struggle than we knew in 1914; Hitler has promised us it will be bloodier. We have many assets on our side, as the Prime Minister pointed out with justice. But all of us must realise that we shall have to exert every ounce of our strength.

May we hope that so far as in us lies, we shall be able to conduct the war with whatever humanity is possible. Britain and France have already responded to President Roosevelt’s appeal for the restriction of bombing. It will be a test of Germany’s good faith whether Hitler also responds.

Whether she does or not, the war will be a terrible thing that will try us hard. We must not and cannot fail.